February 27, 2013

...that's making the rounds, is here. Everybody else on the starboard side of the blogosphere seems to be missing two, which is much better than most Americans.

Full Civic Literacy Exam (from our 2008 survey)

Are you more knowledgeable than
the average citizen? The average score for all 2,508 Americans taking
the following test was 49%; college educators scored 55%. Can you do
better? Questions were drawn from past ISI surveys, as well as other
nationally recognized exams.

Yikes!

Pete and other immigrants should do very well as they have to take a civics exam as part of the naturilization process, yet with most of the country getting an "F" ...well this is a serious problem that explains rather a lot.

How'd ya'll do?

I'd gloat...but I'm a 42 year old undergraduate, so this is not rocket science, and yet...

1
100%, but I'm not surprised that a lot of people do badly. The questions seem evenly divided between Constitutional Law, Economics and American History, with most of the questions being suitable for an undergraduate college-level course.

Few Americans have studied all 3 subjects at a college level, and probably fewer still remember all that they learned.

2
Likewise 100%. Political science degree with a minor in economics. There's a FEW questions in there that are more "trivia" than "civics", though - two or three that relied on your knowledge of certain speeches, etc. Granted that they were generally important speeches. And the question about foreign policy being shared between Congress and the President is... well, it's much closer to what you'd find in a textbook than in the actual world, hm?

A politically active conservative OUGHT to get 100% on this test, or at least damned near.

6...yet with most of the country getting an "F"...well this is a serious problem that explains rather a lot.

Heck, I got 31 out of 33, and (as I mentioned in a previous comment) I'm not even an American. I did take some economics electives in university, and I'll admit to making educated guesses on a few questions.

Posted by: Peter the Not-so-Great at Thu Feb 28 19:14:57 2013 (ElBzz)

7
PTNSG proves the wisdom of the cornerstone of US military policy since 1814.